Forum Upgrade Feedback Thread

[Admin]

Hello Siennachat.com members!

As you may have noticed, we have finally upgraded the site to vBulletin 4. This is vastly different than the SMF-based forum that we were on before, so please take the time to familiarize yourself with the extra options you may now enjoy.

I know some people may fear "change", however I assure you that this is for the better. The software is more stable, has better anti-spam measures, and is more media-friendly when it comes to the user experience here.

That being said, moving a very large database such as this forum employs is never guaranteed 100%. You may find little quirks here and there that might have exposed themselves during the move. Please, if you see anything abnormal, such as error messages or the like, report them back here so I can give them attention immediately. Thank you very much, and I hope the changes we have made will make your time here all the more rewarding.


Adam DeKuyper
Forum Manager
adekuyper@verticalscope.com
Office: (416) 341-8950 ext. 285

[rckymtnsienna]

Have you implemented antispam countermeasures? There have been a lot of complaints on other sites about how hard it is to get access/registered.

Forum looks great!

[datsa noydb]

Just signed in tonight for the first time in about a week, and noticed the improvement IMMEDIATELY.

I am on a couple other forums that use vBulletin (but a different version), so it feels comfortable to me.

.

[fibber2]

Looks nice but the fancy graphics and abundant ad space take 3x longer to load each page. Positive progress??

[Narboza]

Is there any way to get back the thread subscriptions which got lost in the change?

[Narboza]

While trying to add a TSB PDF to a post from earlier today, I got the error "T-SB-0182-11 11 Sienna HID Headlamp Abnormal Operation.pdf - Exceeds your quota by 4.21 MB. Click here to view your attachments" The file is only 1.6MB so it appears I can no longer upload attachments. When I clicked the link, I got the page explaining smilies and not the one displaying my attachments, of which there are many. Fixes for both problems would be appreciated.

[bill_toyota]

Looks nice but the fancy graphics and abundant ad space take 3x longer to load each page. Positive progress??

I agree. The site use to be quick and good to use. Now just browsing around the fourms sucks (to put it nicely). It's not very rewarding anymore. If you can speed things back up, it would be a lot better.

[fibber2]

Returning to the main page or topic page is more difficult as the "path" is missing. Sorry, not sure of the proper name of it.

[Narboza]

[fibber2] the "breadcrumbs" (yes, that is what they call it) are in the grey horizontal box near the top of the page ... the one with the Google search box in it.

[Admin]

I agree. The site use to be quick and good to use. Now just browsing around the fourms sucks (to put it nicely). It's not very rewarding anymore. If you can speed things back up, it would be a lot better.

Hi Bill, because it's a new site essentially, your browser will need to cache everything all over again. In time, you should notice improvement as your browser will have stored content locally as opposed to having to download it from the servers.
But if you do notice anything like scripts hanging or ads not displaying very fast, please let me know.

Have you implemented antispam countermeasures? There have been a lot of complaints on other sites about how hard it is to get access/registered.

Forum looks great!

On the old SMF forum all new registrations were moderated. Every morning I would log in to see 100+ users awaiting approval. 99% would be spam accounts, so I looked for usernames and/or email addresses that appeared "normal" and only approved those. I suppose I would have accidentally rejected a "real" registration from time-to-time though.

vBulletin gives us more tools to fight spam, such as the SolveMedia check at registration, and cross-referencing the IP address with the StopForumSpam.com database.

[roketh]

The thread title's on the home page are being truncated even when there is plenty of screen space. They could probably be doubled in length

[meridian]

Thanks for the upgrade, I needed more advertisements. BTW all the avatars disappeared that was a nice touch. Oh did I mention the page loads much slower. The reason people fear change is because once in a while some people try to fix something that was not broken and find a way to completely "F" it all up.

[overlyunderme]

The new forum look and feel is great. Good job on the upgrade. I am having a problem viewing garage photos. It is taking a really long time to render the image. So long, that I've given up on trying to view them and just click off of it. Just an FYI.

[Admin]

Thanks for the upgrade, I needed more advertisements. BTW all the avatars disappeared that was a nice touch. Oh did I mention the page loads much slower. The reason people fear change is because once in a while some people try to fix something that was not broken and find a way to completely "F" it all up.

Please see my previous post to bill_toyota about page loading times. I'll have to submit a support ticket to see if we can fix the avatars issue.

The new forum look and feel is great. Good job on the upgrade. I am having a problem viewing garage photos. It is taking a really long time to render the image. So long, that I've given up on trying to view them and just click off of it. Just an FYI.

Garage issue has been fixed. There was no directory path given so any images uploaded went nowhere. Unfortunately you'll have to re-upload them. If you still have problems, let me know. Thanks.

[meridian]

Please see my previous post to bill_toyota about page loading times. I'll have to submit a support ticket to see if we can fix the avatars issue.




Garage issue has been fixed. There was no directory path given so any images uploaded went nowhere. Unfortunately you'll have to re-upload them. If you still have problems, let me know. Thanks.

I apologize for my crabby complaint about the forum revamp. I should not have vented like that.sorry.